1. Field
The present disclosure relates to an intelligent integrated apparatus and method for generating a facial composite image, which supports enhancement and multi-functionality of a facial composite image system applied to criminal investigations, and a recording medium for performing the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
A montage is one of solutions for solving criminal events, and when making a montage, points similar to features of a suspect are found based on memory of witnesses who remember the face of the suspect, and an expected face image of the suspect is generated using various approaches.
A montage generating method may be generally classified into an overall composing method and a partial composing method. In the partial composing method, face information memorized by humans are regarded as fragmentary partial features. A montage system based on the partial composing method builds database for facial parts such as face contours, eyebrows, eyes, noses, mouths, ears, jaws or the like in advance and then generates a montage by selectively composing shapes of memorized parts from the database. This system is applied to, for example, a Korean montage program, used in the National Policy Agency of South Korea, as well as ‘E-fit’, ‘Identikit’, ‘FACETTE’, ‘FACES’, ‘CD-FIT’ or the like in other countries.
Meanwhile, the overall composing method is based on a psychological and cognitive science, based on the theory that a human recognizes a face in a holistic way, rather than in a piecemeal way. In this method, a montage is generated by combining whole face images, rather than partial face images. In other word, a witness selects face images most similar to his/her memory from given face images, and composes the selected face images in an evolutionary approach to obtain a desired montage finally. This method is applied to ‘EFIT-V’, ‘EvoFit’ or the like. It has been studied that the whole composing method allows faster generation of a montage in comparison to the partial composing method, and also gives better accuracy in comparison to the partial composing method.
However, in existing systems, a result obtained by composing may not be natural. In addition, existing systems are deficient in free modifications for delicately correcting a face image. For this reason, in practical use, an image generated by the montage system is frequently re-modified through a Photoshop program, which is cumbersome.